Haoma-Soma in the Worldof Ancient Greecet

Joseph Wohlberg*Abstract — Evidence of the worship of (nonalcoholic) Haoma-Soma in Iran and India(identified by Wasson as Amanita muscaria) can be found in Greece and its neighboringlands. While Iranian and Indie peoples preserved their original worship in their final settlements, Indo-European tribes, including the Thracians, the Phrygians, and the Greeks,after settling in Europe and Asia Minor, abandoned their ancestral worship of Soma(Sabazios) and substituted the Semitic (alcoholic) Dionysos. However, they retained tracesof the original Soma worship in Dionysiac rituals. This modified Dionysiac worship spreadthroughout the Western world. Six formal criteria are used to establish the identity of Somawith Dionysos (Sabazios): (1) both cults had the same aim (to cause ecstatic behavior);(2) both cults required the attainment of the same spiritual state (purity); (3) both cultshad an idiosyncratic myth in common; (4) both cults showed the identical word root inthe name of the worshiped god; (5) both cults had identical zoological and botanical associations with their god; and (6) the alcoholic god (Dionysos) was depicted as havingthe same physical effects on human beings as that of the ancient nonalcoholic god (Soma).

Keywords—Amanita muscaria, ancient Greece, Dionysos, Sabazios, Soma

The aim of the present article is to find in ancientGreece and its peripheral neighbors traces of the worshipof Haoma-Soma that was practiced in Iran and India. Itis postulated that the worship of Sabazios (Dionysos) inThrace, Phrygia, and Greece shows remnants of the original Indo-European cult of Haoma-Soma.

One of the most vivid divinities in the Rigveda is thegod Soma While some of the gods of the Indie pantheon,such as Indra, Surya, Agni, and Dyauspitar, are spokenof with awe and reverence, the believers* deep and intenselove is concentrated on Soma. The god is close to humans— so close, in fact, that if a human being partakes of himor incorporates him, the human being acquires some ofthe god's divine essence.

tFor references to ancient Greek texts, the reader is referred to theLoeb Classical Library. Published from 1910 to the present by WilliamHeinemann (London) and Harvard University Press (Cambridge,Massachusetts), this series of volumes listed by author, with Greek andEnglish texts on alternate sides of the page, is available at most universityand major public libraries. Citations from the Rigveda and the Avestaare copied from Wasson (1968).♦Professor (Retired), Department of Classical Languages, The City

CoUege of The City University of New York.Please send reprint requests to the author at 500 East 83rd Street,

Apartment 17E, New York, New York 10028.

On the plateau of pre-Zoroastrian Iran the same godsprevailed as on the Indian subcontintent Zoroaster's religion consigned all the Indie divinities to the rank of devas,or demons. But in the case of Soma (or Haoma in ancientPersian), Zoroaster's teachings were ambiguous. He hadextravagant words of praise for the god in H5m Yast ceremony, but elsewhere in the Avesta (48:10) he impatientlydecried the use of Haoma: "When wilt thou do away withthe urine of drunkenness with which the priests evilly delude[the people] as do the wicked rulers of die provinces in fullconsciousness of what they do?" It is possible that Zoroasterwas not against the worship of Soma per se, but that he excoriated the manner in which the god was worshiped. It mayalso be that the worship of Soma was too deeply ingrainedin the population of Iran and that Zoroaster prudently madethis one exception in his condemnation of the ancestral polytheism of the people.

The very word "Soma" (Haoma) has an interestingderivation. The name goes back to the Sanskrit root su (tocrush). In its strengthened forms (guna and vrddhi), the rootbecomes so or even sau. Thus the basic meaning of the wordis "the crushed one."

The identity of Soma has been one of the biggest question marks in the field of religious history. It is known that

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some aspect of a plant was crushed and after a series oftreatments of its juice it became an intoxicant, an elixirthat conferred on the partaker an ultimate oneness withdivinity. Thus, for a short time the human being becamea god. The term "Soma" refers to the plant, its juice, andfinally to the god who is the personification of its beneficent effects.

The identification of Soma received a significantboost from the work of the prominent ethnomycologistR. Gordon Wasson (1968). He identified Soma with thepoisonous but beautiful toadstool Amanita muscaria.Today Wasson's thesis has found general acceptance bymost experts in the field of the botany of psychoactivedrug plants. For the purposes of the present article, a briefreview of his arguments for the identification of Soma maybe of value.

Somewhere on the Eurasian continent, perhaps inEuropean or Asiatic Russia, Indo-European tribes livedside by side with Finno-Ugrian peoples. It does appearthat the more closely related language group of Sanskrit,Avestan, and ancient Greek share a small part of the vocabulary with some Finno-Ugrian tribes still living inSiberia (Burrow 1955). It is by no means improbable thatalong with vocabulary these peoples exchanged religiouspractices, although there is no existing knowledge of whoborrowed from whom.

In connection with the descriptive words used in theRigveda that recount the qualities of Soma, Burrow listed30 words common to Finno-Ugrian and Indo-Iranian languages. Several of the words from this list were used inthe Rigveda as epithets of Soma. Furthermore, one otherinteresting item may be noted. Among Finno-Ugrian peoples the original word for Amanita muscaria was *pong,a word apparently cognate with the Latin fungus, meaninga mushroom.

Wasson cited the descriptions by several travelers ofthe mores of tribes living in the valleys of the Ob and theYenisei as well as on the Kamchatka peninsula, and headded to these observations many of his own descriptions.Until recently, Amanita muscaria was being used by suchtribes as the Ostyaks, Voguls, Koryaks, and the Samoyedsfor the psychoactive qualities that this toadstool offered.The shamans of these tribes crushed the mushroom to obtain a juice that produced ecstatic, hallucinogenic (or, asWasson would have it, entheogenic) experiences, whichenabled the partaker to perform physical feats of astonishing dimensions. It is this plant, Amanita muscaria, thatWasson identified to be Soma.

Except for the Himalayan highlands of India,Amanita muscaria is not found on the rest of the Indiansubcontinent or in Iran. According to Wasson, the Indo-Iranian tribes brought the tradition of the Soma plant withthem into lands where Amanita muscaria does not readilygrow. For a while, connections were perhaps maintained

with the homeland where the mushroom was gathered andbrought in dried form to their new habitats. (When theoriginal Soma was gathered, it was not a plant that wascultivated and reaped, but was found and gathered in a wildform.) With the passage of time, connections with thehomeland weakened and finally disappeared, and somealternate substance had to be found to enable priests to engage in their ancient rituals. As will be shown, in somelands the cultivation of the grape and the production ofwine as an intoxicant supplied an adequate substitute, andfinally supplanted Soma altogether. However, neither inIndia nor in Iran has the substitute for Soma ever takenthe form of an alcoholic intoxicant

In India, the Rigveda is the principal source of information concerning Soma. The plant, when mature, wasgleaming with a red-golden glow like the sun during theday (Rigveda IX 4610ab), and was silvery white at night(DC 979d). It shed its original white coating (DC 8649c), andshining like a bull it still wore the dress of sheep (DC 707).Sometimes it was likened to a cow's udder to be milked(VIII919*), and sometimes to Heaven's head (IX 698cd).It grew in the mountains (V 43c) and absorbed the sun'srayS — filter of the sky (IX 665abc) — in order to acquirethe basic miraculous potency.

•The priests (or officiants) pounded the plant withstones (DC 115"6), passed its pulp through a filter of lamb'swool (thus, a second filter), mixed its juice with milk, curdor honey, and drank the yellow liquid thus produced. Thepriests, impersonating Indra or Indra's charioteer VSyu,received the poison into themselves, where a further purification was achieved (IX 803*). These officiants, withtheir bladders full, urinated the Soma; in this way, theythemselves served as the final living filter of the inebriatingjuice (DC 744), a juice now purified, ready to be ingested,ready to be drunk as the wondrous drink of immortality.Past travelers among the Finno-Ugrian peoples attestedto the same practice in Siberia. The juice of Amanita muscaria was not very effective just after it had been extractedfrom the mushroom, but now—after it had been urinatedby the shamans — its potency became prodigious.

The custom of drinking urine can be explained bymodern chemistry (Schultes & Hofmann 1980). Whileftesh, Amanita muscaria contains ibotenic acid, which produces several compounds, including muscimole (the activehallucinogenic principle), when the mushroom is dried.When Amanita muscaria is wetted again and its juice issqueezed out and ingested, the muscimole is not metabolized, but it passes through the body and it is excretedin the urine, with its hallucinogenic power unchanged.Therefore, the urine itself, when ingested, can cause hallucinations and intoxication again. In fact, it is possiblethat the raw juice of Amanita muscaria can cause unpleasant side effects, including nausea, dizziness, and coldsweat, but the agents causing these side effects will have

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been metabolized and are inactive in the urine. Thus, theperson who drinks the raw juice is, in a sense, a filter andthe urine is thus regarded as the purified liquid of immortality.

Wasson noted that Amanita muscaria physically answers every description that is lavished on the Soma inthe Rigveda. As a mushroom, it grows rapidly, withoutroots, leaves or branches. Remarkably like a phallus in appearance, its cap is covered with fleecy-white tegumen(the silvery white of night, the dress of sheep, the cow'sudder). This tegumen breaks into tufts, revealing a cap orhead beneath that gleams golden-red (like the sun, a bullor a single eye). The tribal shamans reverenced the ecstasy-producing qualities of this liquid filtered through a humanbeing, which ultimately became a wondrous liquid of immortality.

Two particular points made by Wasson are saved forlast because, as will be shown later, these points are of special importance for the purpose of this article. Wassonnoted two associations with Amanita muscaria in Siberiaand Russia. First, Amanita muscaria grows in northernEurasia in a symbiotic relationship with birches and firs.When the mushroom thrusts itself forth from the ground,it is always under the shadow of and near the roots of thesetrees. Further south, the birches and firs disappear andAmanita muscaria is nowhere to be found.

Second, there is an interesting association betweenAmanita muscaria and creeping animals like lizards, toads,and frogs. The English word "toadstool" for Amanita muscaria is a perfect example. Other European languages follow the same trend: Norwegians and Danes speak of atoad's hat; the Low Germans speak of a frog's stool; theIrish speak of a frog's pouch; and the Pennsylvania Dutchspeak of a toad's stool (grottestuhl) and a toad's foot (grot-tefuss). In some local dialects, the French use the identicalconcept. They refer to Amanita muscaria as crapaudin(from crapaud, meaning toad). Yet, nowhere is there anactual cause and effect established to account for this relationship. The present author's view is that both Amanitamuscaria and the presence of toads and frogs require ashady terrain with considerable moisture. Besides, themushroom — growing low on the ground—is a perfectnatural companion for amphibians and snakes. Also, thetoxic nature of the skin of some amphibians can be associated with the toxicity of Amanita muscaria.

ANCIENT GREECE

It is not easy to isolate elements of worship of Haoma-Soma in ancient Greece for the simple reason that theseelements were mixed up with a similar god, though a godof totally different origin. It is the thesis of this article thatthe divinity ultimately worshiped in Greece and cognatewith Haoma-Soma was, in its basic elements, the Thracian

god Sabazios. Because this god was syncretized at the endof the fifth century B.C. with the Greek Dionysos orBakchos, the cult of this complex god that came to Greecefrom foreign lands will now be analyzed.

It is known that Dionysos-Bakchos was originally anon-Greek god, probably of Semitic origin. According toJames (1959), his remote ancestry seems to be the Asiaticdying god of fertility (Tammuz, Adonis, Baal, Attis), associated with the Great Mother Goddess (Inanna-Ishtar,Astarte, Ananth, Kybele). Essentially this dying god, anembodiment of grain (his body) and wine (his blood),came to life in the spring. When he grew to maturity(ripened), he allowed himself to be ground and crushedfor the benefit of humanity, but before his self-sacrifice,he gave up part of his seed to impregnate the Great Motherto assure a crop for next year. Since he rose again the following year, he was not only a god representing humankind's nourishment and fertility, but also a god ofdeath and ultimate resurrection.

Because his death each year was a cause for mourningand lamentation, the Semitic population (always loath tocall a god by his true name) occasionally referred to himin their Semitic language as Bakuy, the lamented god(Astour 1961). The worship of this lamented god waswidely practiced from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and from southernmost Arabia to the Black Sea.This Semitic god came by several paths to Greece and tolands neighboring Greece, where the ancient Soma mayhave been originally worshiped. It was in the neighboringland of Thrace and Macedonia that the Semitic god wasfirst syncretized with Sabazios.

One important avenue whereby the Semitic lamentedgod reached Greece was by way of Thrace, a land that lieswest of the Hellespont, in what is modern Bulgaria andEuropean Turkey. Precisely when the Thracians settledin their territory is difficult to determine, in part becausethe Thracians left no written records, with the exceptionof an unintelligible seal ring. They never seemed to havemastered the art of writing. It is possible that they mayhave come from their home in Russia to their new landeven before the Greeks occupied the land that historicallybecame their own. By the time of the Trojan War, theThracians seem to have been acclimatized to their Semiticneighbors in that they worshiped the Great MotherGoddess (Herodotus said that her name was Bendis) andthey practiced Semitic polygamy and circumcision.

One Thracian tribe crossed the Hellespont into Asiaand settled in Anatolia. They were called the Briges orPhrygians (Nilsson 1967; Strabo's Geography). In fact,in the Iliad (2.II: 844-846, 861-862), Homer listed thePhrygians, as well as the Thracians, as allies of Troyagainst the invading Greeks. It is the present author's beliefthat the Thracians in general, and the Phrygians in particular, had brought the worship of the god Haoma-Soma

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from their ancestral home to a place where Amanita muscaria was not used, or simply did not grow.

Unlike the situation in India and Iran where the incoming Indo-Europeans found no competition, thePhrygians became neighbors of the Semites who alreadyhad an ecstasy-inducing god, namely Bakuy. Of coursethis god produced an ecstatic experience through alcohol,and before long the prevailing Semitic god and the ancestral Sabazios or Soma were syncretized. They translatedthe borrowed Semitic lamented god Bakuy into their ownIndo-European language as Diounsis (the perfect passiveparticiple of the Sanskrit root dlv=lament: dyund=lamented). The word "Diounsis" (of course borrowed bythe Greeks as Dionysos and regarded as a proper name:cf., Adonis) is found by good fortune on gravestones ofthe third century A.D., written partly in Greek and partlyin Phrygian (Calder 1927: 161ff.). Here the god is described as a guardian of tombs. Thus, there are two namesfor the same god: the Thrako-Phrygian and Indo-EuropeanSabazios as well as his syncretized version Diounsis, whooriginally was invoked as Bakuy by the Semites.

The worship of this naturalized god (Diounsis-Sabazios), now honored for his alcoholic drink, quicklyspread not only among the Phrygians but also among theirThracian confreres west of the Hellespont, although not

_ without resistance. In the Iliad (6.II: 130-140), Homerspoke darkly about Dionysos' vengeance on Lykourgos,a king of the Thracians; Diodorus Siculus (111.65:4-6) alsoelaborated on this struggle. While the course of this religious conflict is not known, at a later date the Thracianswere known as notorious drunkards and, according toHerodotus, one of the chief Thracian gods was Dionysos.Of course, in discussing Thracian religion, Herodotus contradicts himself elsewhere by calling the chief god of theThracians Zalmoxis.

The only available significant religious evidence fromThrace is the omnipresent depiction of the "Hero," the godon horseback. Like the Semitic dying god, he is nevernamed (the dedicatory inscriptions are in Greek, notThracian). In several representations he is shown performing the Semitic ritual, the tepds y&u,os (sacred marriage)with the Mother Goddess. However, unlike in the SemiticEast, he is nowhere shown as a minor divinity dying eachyear. Occasionally, his robe or saddle is decorated withivy, the symbol of eternity. In fact, he seems to occupy aposition of supreme eminence. Although he is nameless,many authorities (e.g., Nilsson 1967; Kazarow 1938) identify this hero as the god Sabazios-Diounsis, and he maybe identical to the Thracian god whom Herodotus calledDionysos. On Thracian reliefs, he is shown riding towarda tree (perhaps the Tree of Life), and often a snake is coiledabout the tree, perhaps a theriomorphic representation ofthe god. Usually, the hero is shown hunting down a wildboar (often symbolizing death in the Semitic world (cf.,the presence of a wild boar in the myth of Adonis). As ifJournal of Psychoactive Drugs

to show his eastern origin, the hero is represented as wearing a Phrygian cap (Pol & Marazov 1975). One means ofidentifying the "Hero" is his occasional gesture of blessing,the Benedictio Latina (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1977),which is a prominent characteristic of Sabazios, as willbe seen below.

It is interesting that in Asia Minor the hero is knownas ZuXoiv, the "Saving God" (Nilsson 1967:658). The present author believes that in this instance there is a bit ofreligious chauvinism on the part of the Greeks who alwaysinsisted on identifying every foreign deity with their own,often resorting to false etymology to enhance the argument Undoubtedly, the Thrako-Phrygian "Hero" god, generally nameless in the Semitic manner, was perhaps calledhieratically Sabazios or its Thracian equivalent, and theGreeks simply used a word of their own Icc^cov, whichsounded roughly like the Thracian term, to designate thisforeign god. As a whole, the term "Saving God" was aptbecause the hero helped worshipers, saving them from illness, death, and sin.

Some aspects of the Thracian Diounsis (Dionysos)slowly filtered down to Greece, and the Greeks did maintain a tradition that their Dionysos came to Greece fromAnatolia-Lydia (see Euripides' The Bakchai) or fromThrace, thus indirectly from Asia Minor. However, Bakuy,the same Semitic "Lamented God" who was introducedto the Phrygians and Thracians, was also brought directlyto Greece by the Phoenicians. Thebes, the traditional birthplace of Dionysos, was an early Phoenician colony, andKadmos, a Phoenician himself, is credited with having introduced the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. It wasKadmos' daughter Semele, who after union with Zeus,bore Bakchos-Bakuy as an illegitimate child. AfterBakchos had grown up, he encountered the same opposition on the part of the Greek chieftains as his Thrako-Semitic counterpart Diounsis-Sabazios met in Thrace.Thus, in Greece there is actually one god with two names,Bakchos and Dionysos. The Greeks identified the two godsand used the names interchangeably. Bakchos was the direct Hellenization of the Semitic Bakuy, while Dionysosmay have been a Thrako-Phrygian translation of the sameBakuy, but indirectly acquired.

Unlike the Thracian tribes, the Greek states (to someextent) managed to domesticate this alien god. Up to almost the end of the fifth century B.C., Dionysos was a gentle god who was kind to those who accepted him.However, as a reminder of his wild origins (that he maintained in Thrace), he was cruel and unforgiving to his opponents. Generally, he offered his body and his blood aswell as his sexuality to all who would take him and accepthim, but if anyone denied him, he drove that person mad.He could enter any human being if that person ingestedthe god by eating the god's flesh and drinking the god'sblood. He gave to anyone under his influence a feeling ofimmortality, an experience of divine essence. Yet, in anger,

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he could cause humans to lose their minds and in theirmadness to tear an unbeliever from limb to limb, thus causing his victim to suffer dismemberment (o7tapa7p.6s), afate that he himself had suffered all the time in mortalguise, although of course as an immortal he always returned to life. While Greek tradition usually assigned theact of dismemberment to women (Mainades), his companions Satyroi and Seilenoi probably performed this destructive task in the god's Semitic begirmings. (The word "saty-ros" comes from the Semitic root s.t.r., meaning to tear,to butcher, to dismember [Astour 1961]).

As a god of wine, Dionysos' emblem was thegrapevine (as well as the ivy), and he carried with him hisscepter entwined with grape leaves or ivy — namely thethyrsus. Whomsoever he touched with his thyrsus, thathuman being came under his influence. Associated withDionysos (or perhaps an emanation of the god) was Eros'or Desire, who imbued any mortal with the presence of thegod, and thus made that mortal temporarily a god. In theGreek world, Dionysos was usually associated with theeastern symbol of strength, the bull, or with the Greek animal symbols of sexuality, the goat or the ass.

This complex Hellenized Semitic god of fertility wassyncretized with Diounsis-Sabazios in Greece at the endof the fifth century and through the fourth century B.C. Thistime, the syncretizing process seems to have originatedfrom the rising power of Macedonia. Situated north ofThessaly and west of Thrace, Macedonia was a semibar-baric land where—from the Greek point of view—primitive religious practices still prevailed. The proximity ofthe country to Thrace undoubtedly opened Macedonia upto strong Thracian religious influence. The Macedonianlanguage (while Greek of sorts) was barely understood bythe Greeks, and the Macedonians themselves were probably a mixture of Hellenic and Thracian elements. At anyrate, Macedonia (like Thrace) gave special prominence inits pantheon to the god Dionysos. Actually, in the eyes ofthe Greeks, the Dionysos of the Macedonians was not onlymore primitive and wilder than their own god, but was undoubtedly (like the Thracian god) an essentially differentgod, namely Sabazios.

It is fortunate that first-hand information about thisDionysos is available from no less an observer thanEuripides. The playwright, who had been a spokesman forAthenian humanism, departed in his old age from Athensand spent the last two years of his life in barbaricMacedonia because of his disenchantment with Athensbeing ground down by the Peloponnesian War. The existingproduct of his self-imposed exile is his masterpiece TheBakchai. This play is the first concrete evidence of the"other Dionysos," a god wilder and more primitive thanhis tamed Greek counterpart but at the same time more spiritual and more psychologically moving, namely Sabazios.

PROOF OFTHE IDENTIFICATION

OF HAOMA-SOMA

The main thesis of the present article is that the non-Greek Macedonian-Thracian god was Sabazios, the thirdembodiment of the Indo-Iranian Haoma-Soma. Ideally,to prove this identification, six different types of identitywould have to be demonstrated: (1) that Sabazios was essentially the same ecstasy-causing god, ingested in a similar way, as Haoma-Soma; (2) in order to partake of thegod's divinity, the celebrant had to be pure or had to acquire spiritual purity as a prerequisite before being considered fit to receive the god; (3) the two different deitieswould have to be shown as sharing some very individual— even idiosyncratic — episode in their myths; (4) itwould help the proof if it could be shown that (allowingfor linguistic changes) Haoma-Soma and Sabazios had thesame name; (5) keeping in mind Wasson's hypothesis ofthe identity of Haoma-Soma with the Amanita muscariaof the Finno-Ugrians, it would have to be seen if Sabaziosshared ot suggested the same associations as Amanita muscaria; and (6) that the psychoactive effects produced byAmanita muscaria compare favorably with the effectsDionysos-Sabazios provided, as described in the literatureof ancient Greece.

Sabazios Is the Same as Haoma-SomaHistorically, Sabazios was a god associated with ec

static experience. However, this experience was causednot by hallucinogenic mushroom juice, but by the eatingof the god's body in the form of bread and by die drinkingof the god's blood in the form of fermented grape juice(i.e., wine), particularly the latter. Sometimes the feelingof ecstasy came from dancing and the music accompanying the dance. It should always be remembered that inGreece or in the peripheral territories of Macedonia andThrace Amanita muscaria may have not been available,very much as on the plateau of Iran and on the subcontinent of India.

While the literate societies of Iran and India, throughthe Avesta and Rigveda, kept the memory of the ancientHaoma-Soma alive (even though various substitutes hadto be used for the traditional but no longer available plant),the neighboring lands of Greece had not preserved sucha tradition, and the substitution of alcoholic wine for thenonalcoholic mushroom juice had been made long ago inthe deep recesses of their prehistory. It should also be remembered that centuries separated the mention of Haoma-Soma and Sabazios. The Rigveda may date from theeleventh century B .C. or even earlier and the older partsof the Avesta were perhaps from the tenth century B.C.,whereas the first mention of Sabazios came (at the earliest)from the end of the fifth century B.C. and with increasing

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frequency from then on. If it were not for the existenceof the Rigveda in India and the Avesta in Iran, neither Indianor Iran of the fifth century B.C. would have had the vividtradition of the Soma or the Haoma.

Of course, the electrifying appearance of the SemiticBakuy-Bakchos-Diounsis-Dionysos tended to cause theIndo-Iranian Haoma-Soma to fade somewhat in the consciousness of the Thrako-Phrygians and Macedonians. Therival divinity absorbed many of the ecstatic properties ofthe Aryan god. In Iran and India, the incoming tribes foundamong the native peoples no equivalent divinity who couldbe as intimate with a human being as to offer himself tobe eaten and imbibed. The Haoma-Soma had no rival andconsequently prevailed in human consciousness.

Purity and PurificationWhile the traditional Greek account of the celebration

of Dionysos endowed his rites with suggestions ofrowdiness, noise and sexual abandon, the Thrako-Phrygianand Macedonian god required of the worshiper purity ofthe soul. The dualistic concept is perfectly illustrated inEuripides' The Bakchai. While Pentheus, in true Greekfashion, shows contempt for the rites of the god, and likea Puritan seems to sniff lewdness in the god's worship, themessenger in the play goes to great lengths to describe thesimple purity of the women as they celebrate the god innaked innocence. As will be seen below, before neophytescould be admitted into the presence of the god, they hadto be purified and every particle of impurity or dirt hadto be washed or rubbed out of the very pores. The choralodes of the play echo a basic search for psychic purity,which can be obtained by allowing oneself to exist inunion with nature.

This basic search for purity is prevalent in the HornYast ceremony of the Avesta, and throughout the ninthbook of the Rigveda wherever Soma is mentioned. Theblessing of the god must be merited by the celebrant, foronly the pure are fit to receive the god.Deities Share Individual Characteristics

The most insistent and striking myth about Dionysos-Sabazios in the Greek world was the strange manner ofthe god's birth. Although he was conceived of Zeus andhis mother Semele, as Semele was perishing in flames inZeus' presence, Zeus took the unborn god from Semele'swomb and placed the fetus in his own thigh, so that theunborn child might complete his normal period of incubation. Thus, the god was born from Zeus' thigh, and wasoften referred to as thigh-bred Dionysos (u.TtpoTpcuj>fisAiovuaos) or thigh-sown Dionysos (\ir\pof>(>amr\sAiovwos). In this way, the god was actually born twice:prematurely of a mother and, in the fullness of time, fromthe thigh of his father, Zeus. By false etymology, ancientGreeks explained the god's frequent epithet "dithyram-

bos," as "he who came twice to the gates of birth" (5 Sisetipa e ftePriKcbs).

It is therefore surprising to find in an article by Kuhn(1852) on Soma, a quotation from the Vajasaneyi Samhita(4.27) where Soma is called on to enter the right thigh ofIndra. Kuhn further quoted (p. 192) the scholiast to thispassage in the TaittirTya Samhita noting that the gods"brought Soma and placed him in the right thigh of Indra.So, he is now Indra, and he who offers sacrifices to India,for that reason speaks to Soma as well."

Indra, as a storm god, with accompanying thunder,lightning and rain, can easily be equated to Zeus. Certainly,the concept of a god hidden in a mighty god's thigh is mostunusual even in the realm of mythology, so that one isforced to consider the two myths to be closely related. Ofcourse it would be easy to explain the connection as beingdue to borrowing, on account of the appearance ofAlexander the Great in India and the subsequent importation of the Greek myth to India in the fourth centuryB.C., somewhat in the manner of transplanting Greekdrama into later Sanskrit literature. However, the fact remains that both the Vajasaneyi Samhita and the TaitdrTyaSamhita were probably composed five hundred years before the time of Alexander.

Did Haoma-Soma and Sabazios Have the SameName?

The very name of the deity (Sabazios) can be compared with the word "Soma," if the word "Sabazios" is reduced to its simplest form. A passage in Demosthenes'oration "On the Crown" (330 B.C.) provides the neededinformation. Here Demosthenes is trying to denigrate hisrival Aischines by showing that in his youth the latter wasan acolyte of his mother, a priestess of Dionysos-Sabazios.When Aischines led the initiates in a public procession,he would bellow: "O Saboi!"

Because it is known that the initiates of Bakchos, afterpartaking of the body and the blood of Bakchos, becamethe god and were themselves called BakchoU it followsthat in order to be called Saboiy the adherents of theBakchic Sabazios had to ingest a god named Sabos orSavos. This is the basic, elementary form of the name ofthe god Sabazios. It requires no training in philology torecognize the vrddhi strengthened form s&u of the Vedicroot su (meaning to crush), the very root of the word"Soma" (the crushed god). The lexicographer Hesychios(see Nilsson 1967) indicated that the Macedonian wordfor Seilenos, the attendant of Dionysos, was Saudos, thusrepeating the same Indo-Iranian root. Thus the word"Sabazios" is made up of Sabos and Dios (meaning god),where the initial D became a Z (i.e., Dios=Zeus). In fact,in inscriptions the name of the god is occasionally spelledSabadios instead of Sabazios.

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Does Sabazios Share or Suggest the SameAssociations as Amanita muscaria?

In the Hellenic and quasi-Hellenic world, the worshipof Dionysos-Sabazios was associated with various concrete rituals and symbols. Aside from the topic of purityand cleansing previously referred to, it is with the nebris—the spotted fawnskin—that one can establish the mostspecific connection between Haoma-Soma of the Indo-Iranians and Sabazios-Dionysos of the Greeks andMacedonians. It is the accepted concept that the nebris orfawnskin worn by every Dionysiac initiate represented ananimal incarnation of the god, a stag or deer. The initiatewho had become one with Bakchos or Savos wore the nebris united with the god, and was now under the god's skin.By wearing the skin of one of the god's theriomorphic aspects, the neophytes thus showed unmistakably to theworld that they had become the god at the moment of donning the nebris. In other words, god and mortal humansfused for the moment into a single entity. This explanationmay be correct in some instances, although it must be admitted that nowhere is a statement found that the god hadever assumed the shape of a stag or deer.

However, a puzzling passage in the beginning ofEuripides' The Bakchai (not forgetting that the play dealswith the Macedonian Sabazios-Dionysos) makes onepause to seek some other explanation of the nebris symbol.Here, the Bakchic women (followers of Dionysos fromAsia) sing of the god and urge his adherents to don his ritual symbols: "Wreath the garments of the spotted fawnskinwith tufts of white wool."

The passage is mystifying. Dodds (1960), the greatexpert on the play, suspected that an allusion is made hereto some obscure ritual. The mystes, by wearing the nebris,does show that the person and the god are one. Yet, in thisunity, in what physical form is the god manifest? Surely,white woolen tufts are unnecessary if the nebris is to revealthe god as a stag or a deer. How much more likely wouldit be if the initiates showed that they were the god in theshape of Amanita muscarial As Wasson pointed out,Amanita muscaria (when it first thrusts itself from theground) is covered with a veil of woollike silvery whitecover, "the Asurian color." As the mushroom matures, thewhite woollike cover breaks up into tufts, revealing thegolden-red glow of the mushroom cap beneath. Wassoncited some interesting passages from the Rigveda to illustrate his point.

He [Soma] bellows, terrifying bull, with might, sharpeninghis [red-glow] shining horns, gazing afar. The Soma rests in hiswell-appointed birthplace. The hide is of bull, the dress of sheep.

—Rigveda (DC 707)

[Soma] sloughs off the Asurian color [i.e., godlike] that ishis. He abandons the envelope, goes to the rendezvous with theFather [sky]. With what floats he makes his vesture of grand-occasion.

—Rigveda (DC 722)

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like a serpent, he [Soma] creeps out of his skin.—Rigveda (DC 96"")

By day he appears hdri [color of fire], by night silverywhite.

— Rigveda (DC 97")

If one compares these passages of the Rigveda withobscure lines of The Bakchai quoted above, the meaningof these lines of the choral ode and the significance of thenebris become clear. The spotted fawnskin of Dionysosis not worn by mystai because the god manifests himselfas a spotted fawn, but because the nebris—embellishedwith tufts of white wool—reveals in a naturalistic manna:a subconscious idea that the god, and through him themystes, is the mushroom. The golden-red glow of themushroom cap in a color similar to deerskin is thus covered with the tufts of the white woollike remains of its original cover. In this way the fawnskin is the tangible representation of the mushroom.

But have human beings ever tried to represent themselves as the quintessential personification of the mushroom? To answer this question one must turn to the folklore of those tribes that used Amanita muscaria as a divineintoxicant Wasson supplied the answer by quoting a description of the Siberian Koryaks and their religious concepts by the anthropologist Jochelson (1905:115): "In thebeginning of things, at the mythological time of the BigRaven, the transformation of animals and inanimate objects into men was a natural occurrence. At that time manalso possessed the power of transforming himself. Byputting on the skin of an animal, or by taking on the outward physical character of an object, man could assumeits form Eme'mgut [the semi-divine son of the Creator]and his wives put on wide-brimmed hats resembling thefly-agaric [Amanita muscarial and they became the poisonous fungi."

In the above passage one finds a definite trace of primitive sympathetic magic. By appearing with some attributeof a plant or animal, the human being actually becomesand is the substance he or she desires to possess. By showing the supreme power some attribute of the desired object,the individual communicates with heaven to indicate whathe or she wants. However, at this point it should be notedthat in this instance there is a clear concept of human beings uniting with a god (a mushroom god or for that matterany other god).

Elsewhere, Wasson cited another instance where people tried to intimate to heaven what they wanted by tryingto behave as the desired object behaves. Here, Wassoncited another anthropologist, Bogoraz (1904-1909:206),who described the action of a man who wanted to get holdof Amanita muscaria: "I saw one man suddenly snatch asmall narrow bag and pull it with all his might over hishead, trying to break through the bottom. He was evidentlyimitating the mushroom bursting forth from the ground."

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Both of the instances are cited here to prove that thenebris, as a symbol of Sabazios-Dionysos, does not necessarily indicate the god manifested as a deer or stag, butthat this emblem of the god goes back to the time whenSabazios was the sacred mushroom — an identity nolonger remembered but subconsciously followed. ^

Before the end of the fifth century B.C., when theMacedonian-Thracian version of Dionysos began to trickledown to Athens, two plants were chiefly associated withthe god in popular worship. These were the grape, alongwith its foliage the grape leaf, and the ivy. It is easy to understand the meaning of the grape leaf as a symbol of thegod. His Semitic origin as the incarnation of food, namelybread and wine, goes back to Adonis, Baal, and Tammuz.The god's association with ivy may be later and notSemitic. Ivy is an evergreen associated with a climatecolder than that of Asia Minor. The evergreen ivy undoubtedly symbolized Dionysos after he had reached Europe,not as a minor divinity who died each year, but as a godas lasting as the ivy, which even in the midst of snow andice gives promise of the greening season to come. Boththe ivy and the grape leaf were used before the end of thefifth century B.C. as a wreath about the head of Dionysosand as the green frond crowning the end of a bare branchor a fennel (vccpBTiQ, forming the magic wand of the god,namely the thyrsus.

With the introduction of the Thrako-MacedonianSabazios-Dionysos, the character of the god's plant association suddenly changed: the thyrsus was frequentlytoppedby a fir cone rather than a bunch of grape leavesor ivy. In representations from the era of the RomanEmpire, Sabazios (all by himself) is represented as abearded figure, holding a fir cone in the palm of his hand(Nilsson 1967). Since the fir cone represents an evergreenplant, it is not surprising that the branches, with their greenneedles, occasionally replace or appear side by side withthe more traditional ivy; both evergreens were used tosymbolize the god's eternity. It may also be added that inEuripides' The Bakchai, the Maenads were described asreposing in innocent simplicity on the fir needles of theforest on Mt Kithairon. Later, in the same play, Pentheusis shown perched on a fir tree, supposedly in order to spyon the Maenads, but in reality offering himself up unwittingly as a human sacrifice to the god.

One other plant makes its solitary appearance in connection with Sabazios, the so-called white poplar (Xevkti).In "On the Crown," Demosthenes described Aischinesleading a public procession of devotees, with their headsentwined with teoKt\. The word itself does not really denote a specific tree: with a change of accent it simplymeans white, although the Greeks usually applied the wordto the white poplar. If a white birch ever existed in Greece(which it did not in ancient times), it too would have beencalled Xewcrt.

It is interesting that with the arrival of Sabazios onthe Athenian scene, two trees suddenly came intoprominence — the fir and the "white tree," a term usedby the Greeks to denote the only white tree they knew (i.e.,the white poplar). If one recalls Wasson's contention thatthe Amanita muscaria mushroom, the original Haoma-Soma, exists in a symbiotic relationship with the fir andthe birch in Russia, the association of the fir and the whitetree with Savos-Sabazios is remarkable! This is not to suggest that the Macedonians or Thracians had rememberedanything about the true nature of Sabazios as a divine personification of the mushroom. Rather, even after the truemeaning of Sabazios had disappeared, the association ofthe mushroom with the fir and birch remained in popularconsciousness.

Up to the end of the fifth century B.C., aside from hismythic association with the ass and the panther, Dionysoshad two theriomorphic manifestations in the Greek world,namely the goat and the bull. However, with the end ofthe fifth century B.C., Dionysos—now syncretized withSabazios — was suddenly associated with creeping animals: snakes, toads, frogs, and lizards. This associationwith snakes (although the early Greek form of Dionysoshad no such association) can be understood if one recallsthat in Asia Minor the earliest example of the dying god-lover of the Great Mother — the Sumerian Dumuzi orTammuz—was sired by Ningiszida (Lord of the Tree ofLife), who always appeared in the shape of a snake. Thelegend immediately brings to mind the Genesis story ofthe serpent in the Tree of Knowledge. The idea of a godentwined as a snake in the Tree of Knowledge or the Treeof Life was undoubtedly transmitted by Semitic traditionto the Phrygian branch of Thracians, who in turn endowedthe hero god of their European homeland with the sameconcept. Several of the votive tablets show the ThracianHero riding toward the Tree of Life about which a snakeis coiled (Pol & Marazov 1975). In this instance, it is interesting that it is not the Greek tradition that preservesthe Semitic snake association, but rather the Thrako-Macedonian version of the god.

While it is true that the snake aspect of the god wasfor the most part Semitic in origin, the Rigveda occasionally speaks of Soma in terms of a snake creeping out ofhis old skin. Wasson interprets this image as further proofthat the Vedic Soma was Amanita muscaria.

Yet, snakes were not the only crawling creatures associated with Sabazios. Frogs, toads, and lizards figuredprominently as the god's associates. In several ancientsculptured representations the hand of Sabazios may beseen in a gesture of blessing (Benedictio Latino), but thehand of blessing is literally crawling with reptiles and amphibians.

What was the origin of this strange partnership of godand animal? The great historian of Greek religion, Nilsson

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(1967: 660) threw up his hands and declared that"[Sabazios] has an inexplicable preference for crawlinganimals. These manifestations are characteristic of thespirit of the era and the Oriental religions; it cannot be denied that these [associations] actually border on superstition." Nonetheless, the association is very real. Almosta hundred of these "Hands of Blessing" have already beenfound. They were made of bronze and came from a widearea extending from Asia Minor to Spain and fromRumania to North Africa. There must have been a causefor the close connection between Savos-Sabazios andcrawling animals.

Again, returning to the discussion of Wasson's concept of the origin of Haoma-Soma as the hallucinogenicmushroom Amanita muscaria, he spent considerable timediscussing the actual association throughout Europe between this mushroom and toads, frogs, and lizards, as evidenced even by the English term "toadstool" for a poisonous mushroom. Although Wasson wrote of the fact,he did not account for the cause of the association. Therelationship is probably caused by the need for moistureof mushrooms, reptiles, and amphibians, and by the factthat mushrooms and crawling things go together becauseof their closeness to the ground. One other relationshipmay be that the toxic nature of Amanita muscaria can berelated to the toxicity of the skin of some amphibians.

Do the Effects ot Amanita muscaria CompareFavorably with Those of Dionysos-Sabazios?

Wasson reported how the ingestion of Amanita muscaria affects the user. After a short time, the partaker feelseuphoria (but unlike the symptoms after the consumptionof alcohol), experiences a lightness of foot and an abilityto perform tasks beyond a normal capacity. Wasson described a man who, during inebriation with the mushroom,was able to carry a 120-pound sack of flour for 10 miles.Although occasionally nausea and vomiting ensue, severalwitnesses reported that they themselves saw no seriousphysical harm among the participants. Another reportedconcrete symptom is abnormal visual experience: a dropof water on the ground appears to be as large as a pond ora single stalk of straw looks like a big tree trunk (i.e.,macropsia). At a later stage of inebriation, the witnesses reported that the participant sees the muslirc^m as if mshape (a mushroom man) who exerts total power and ordersthe partaker to do anything the mushroom man wishes.

An interesting counterpart to these effects is foundin Greek literature. In The Bakchai of Euripides, Dionysosand King Pentheus encounter each other, and even thoughPentheus wishes to lead an armed expedition against thegod and his followers, on a single word from the god,Pentheus experiences strange feelings. He sees two sunsand two Thebes, each with seven gates. This may be takenas the banal symptom of overindulgence in alcohol, but

in the next vision of Pentheus, while he sees the god inhuman form as before, he also sees him in his theriomorphic shape as a bull. In other words, Pentheus9 vision isnot really double in the conventional sense, but rather heis viewing both ordinary and Dionysiac reality simultaneously. Furthermore, Pentheus exhibits an unusual typeof euphoria. He is full of exaggerated self-confidence andlabors under the delusion that his is all-powerful. He thinkshe can lift an entire mountain (Mt Kithairon) with one armand overturn everything on it (i.e., micropsia). He talkswith the incarnation of his hallucination (i.e., Dionysos),and contrary to his personal wishes, he carries out the suggestions of Dionysos to spy on the Bakchic women, andin order not be found out he is persuaded to wear women'sclothes. Of course in the hands of Euripides the scenewhere Pentheus is thus overpowered by the god becomesnot only a divine possession, but (2,500 years beforeFreud) becomes a situation in which the human subconscious residing within Pentheus (Dionysos) overturnsPentheus' conscious desires.

CONCLUSION

Thus, one is presented with the fact that if Wasson'sidentification of Haoma-Soma with Amanita muscaria isvalid, then a third group of Indo-European peoples on theoutskirts of the Greek world showed circumstantial evidence for an extinct worship of the same liquid of immortality as the Hindus and the ancient Iranians. It is true thatamong the Thrako-Phrygians and the Macedonians the useof the sacred hallucinogenic juice had disappeared, andperhaps a new means of sacred inebriation had been discovered in the form of the fermented juice of the grape.Yet the tradition and the concept of the deity lived beyondthe product, with all its basic associations untouched.

In fact, one of the most individual mythological traits(i.e., being thigh born) is shared by both Soma andSabazios. The name of the god survived, as well as the auraof purity and goodness that one encounters in the Avesta.The use of the fawnskin as a symbol of the god can easilybe interpreted as being reminiscent of the original Haoma-Soma, Amanita muscaria. The fir and birch, the botanicalassociations of the mushroom, the apotheosis of which became the god Haoma-Soma, remained as the half-remembered associates of Sabazios. The unusual attendants ofAmanita muscaria, crawling creatures like toads, frogs,and lizards remained with Sabazios until the time whenChristianity drove the god's worship underground. Lasdy,the effect of Dionysos-Sabazios on individual humansshows more hallucinatory abnormalities in vision than thetraditional alcoholic intoxication.

Finally, in establishing the relationship betweenHaoma-Soma and Sabazios, the ritual use of Haoma-Somafinds a place in the history of the religions of the Western

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world. The fact is that the worship of Sabazios seems tohave played a teasingly important role in the evolution andpractice of Judaism and Christianity. However, tracing this

Haoma-Soma

development belongs elsewhere and is not the theme ofthe present article.

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